Letters To The Editor Watch Collection As College Fund, And A Crazy Place To Put A Power Reserve

Thanks to the great response to last week's reader mail, we're doing it again – today we've got a reader wondering if his watch collection was a good place to park a college fund, and another asking if anyone's ever tried to put a power reserve indicator in a pretty unlikely place. Read on for more.

Thanks for your wonderful magazine and excellent work educating us as watch lovers. I have long been an admirer primarily of the design of fine watches (I am not a cognoscenti and know little about references, bridges, etc.) but never able to afford the pricier ones until recently. In 2004, I made my first purchase – a new Cartier stainless steel automatic Roadster and on a vacation to Jamaica in 2005, a watch dealer insisted that I buy a Panerai Luminor Sub 1000 PAM 00087, at a then princely sum of US $4,000. Having fallen in love with the PAM, I recently acquired a Panerai PAM 538, as a dress watch, and a Patek Philippe Nautilus 5980/1ar-001, for those fun occasions when bling is a must. My total outlay for these watches is approximately US $93,000. I intend to give my entire collection to my 8-year-old granddaughter as a contribution toward her college education in 2023. My question is whether or not I made good choices as a beginning collector and whether or not you believe that these watches will hold their values into the future. I take excellent care of my watches and very rarely do I wear them except for the PAM 87, which is my everyday go-to watch.

Many thanks,

Ian

Panerai PAM00538 Radiomir Oro Rosso 8 Day GMT

Hi Ian, Jack here, and thanks so much for writing in.

Well, those are really two questions – the first, whether you’ve made good choices and the second, whether the watches you have bought will hold their value. To the first, the person best equipped to answer is really you and you alone, but I think you’ve made solid choices in terms of getting things that are going to give you a lot of personal satisfaction. Your mail has the sound of someone who’s having a lot of fun with what he’s got.

The second question is essentially impossible to answer; as an investment in a college fund, though, watches are probably kind of a terrible idea, I’m sorry to say, and looking forward to 2023, which is 8 years away, the only thing we can say is that anyone who says they know what the watch market is going to be like then is a terrible liar. Chances are of the three brands you’ve mentioned the Patek is the likeliest to hold its value, but to what extent depends on so many variables we can’t in good conscience make any sort of prediction, especially eight years out. Depreciation – sometimes significant depreciation – is the rule rather than the exception. (You can make money investing in watches, don’t get us wrong, but that requires so much time commitment and such a considerable amount of networking, education, and specialist knowledge that most folks realistically shouldn’t expect it.)

That doesn’t mean you should avoid luxury watches and fine watchmaking; just bring realistic expectations to the table and make sure you’re buying because you like the watches, not because you expect them to be a viable investment instrument, and you won’t have anything to regret. And if your collection does zoom in value by 2023, you will have the satisfaction of both having a great college fund for your granddaughter, and having had the last word with us!

Hello,

I know the rotor makes it unlikely, but are you aware of any automatic watch that has a power reserve indicator on the movement side?

An interesting question and as you point out, it’s not something that is ever going to be general practice in watchmaking thanks to the presence of the automatic winding rotor.

Blancpain caliber 4225G, with power reserve on the oscillating weight

However, it may have occurred to you that there is actually someplace you could put a power reserve indicator, and that’s on the rotor itself. Interestingly enough, there is at least one company that has actually done it that I can recall, and it’s Blancpain – in the L-Evolution Tourbillon Grande Date, Réserve de Marche Sur Mass Oscilante (that’s “power reserve on the oscillating mass,” more or less) from 2011, which is currently available.

Thanks for the questions and as always, shoot us an email right here and we'll do our best to answer. For best results try to keep it brief and specific.

Update: an alert reader has pointed out that the Panerai P9001 caliber also is an example of a self-winding watch with the power reserve on the back --in this case, directly on the mainplate rather than the rotor, the movement is in several Panerai models, including, for instance, the Luminor 1950 3 Days Power Reserve Acciaio/PAM 00423. Thanks for the reminder!

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